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SPECIAL REPORT

Baltimore’s overdose crisis

They entered treatment. Drugs, overdoses and deaths followed.

Baltimore addiction programs draw patients with free housing while collecting millions. Some say one program—PHA Healthcare—offered little help.

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Amanda Vlakos was found dead of an overdose in September while enrolled in PHA Healthcare, a recovery program that offered free housing.

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Amanda Vlakos was found dead of an overdose in September while enrolled in PHA Healthcare, a recovery program that offered free housing.
They entered treatment. Drugs, overdoses and deaths followed.
Baltimore addiction programs draw patients with free housing while collecting millions. Some say one program—PHA Healthcare—offered little help.
Ricky Austin, 52, first struggled with opioid addiction in his teens.
Overdoses plague a generation of Black men in Baltimore and cities across America
An investigation of millions of death records in partnership with The New York Times, Big Local News and nine newsrooms across the country reveals the extent to which drug overdose deaths have affected one group of Black men in dozens of cities across America at nearly every stage of their adult lives.
PHA Healthcare offices during their Wrapped in Hope event in Baltimore, Friday, on December 13, 2024.
PHA Healthcare client: ‘I have nowhere to go’ as company fails to pay rent
A Maryland addiction treatment program that was ordered to cease and desist counseling services has stopped paying rent on at least three properties.
Finding a good drug treatment program in Maryland is tough. We can help.
If you’re looking for treatment, there are some things you should know, according to providers and the public officials who oversee them.
A Bmore POWER worker distributes Narcan at an intersection of Cumberland Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Baltimore on Thursday, August 3, 2023.
Overdose deaths dropped sharply last year in Maryland, Baltimore
Overdose deaths in Maryland fell “dramatically” last year, Gov. Wes Moore announced Tuesday.
City Councilman Mark Conway is pushing for wider use of buprenorphine to help with the city’s overdose crisis.
Mayor, councilman at odds again over Baltimore’s opioid strategy
What Mark Conway says is groundbreaking and lifesaving, the mayor’s office says is irresponsible and simplistic.
PHA Healthcare's founder, Stephen Thomas, at his office in Baltimore, MD, December 13, 2024.
PHA Healthcare owner says treatment services have ended
The owner of PHA Healthcare said he has ended its treatment services, but clients are still living in the addiction treatment provider’s housing.
An apartment complex in West Baltimore that PHA Healthcare uses to house some clients in recovery in Baltimore on October 18, 2024.
PHA Healthcare says it will still house patients after state order to stop addiction treatment
PHA Healthcare has told some patients that they can continue to reside in its housing, according to Banner interviews with current clients.
An apartment complex in West Baltimore that housed PHA Healthcare patients, photographed on Friday, January 10 2025
PHA Healthcare ordered to ‘cease and desist’ after Banner investigation
PHA Healthcare, a drug addiction treatment provider that enrolls hundreds of Medicaid patients in Maryland each year, has been ordered by the state health department to stop providing services to patients.
The Maryland Department of Health is located in the Herbert R. O'Conor State Office Building at 201 W. Preston Street in Baltimore.
Maryland extends pause on some new addiction, mental health programs to tackle Medicaid fraud
The moratorium, first announced in June, followed explosive growth of new providers, some of whom were described by officials as unscrupulous.
A picture of Jedale Parsons and her son, Hunter, on a cross at her home in Hagerstown, Md., on Thursday, October 17, 2024. Hunter Parsons passed away from an overdose on January 1, 2023.
New Year’s Day is usually a celebration. In Baltimore, it’s the deadliest day for overdoses.
New Year’s Day has been the deadliest day of the year for overdoses, a Banner analysis of a decade of autopsy data found.
Many are dying from fentanyl and other drugs. The hardest hit are Black men in their 50s to 70s, a group that Baltimore’s changing economy left behind.
The Banner is sharing data about U.S. overdoses. We hope it saves lives.
A note from Baltimore Banner Editor in Chief Kimi Yoshino on The Banner sharing data about U.S. overdoses.
More than 180 people applied to a new city panel that will recommend how to spend millions won in opioid settlements. Mayor Brandon Scott laid out a multiyear plan for the rest of the winnings in an August executive order.
More than 180 people seek to guide how Baltimore will spend its opioid millions
The Restitution Advisory Board will help guide the city as it spends the more than $650 million it won from pharmaceutical companies accused of inundating the Baltimore area with millions of legal opioid painkillers.
Flowers laid by Mona Setherley at the rowhome where her son, Bruce Setherley, was discovered deceased from an overdose in Baltimore on February 15, 2024.
Banner analysis: Inequality central to Baltimore’s unprecedented overdose crisis
Baltimore’s unprecedented overdose crisis has not been suffered equally. Neighborhoods with the highest overdose rates were often the same ones with the highest rates of poverty, a Banner analysis found.
Victoria Richardson plays with her daughter Khalani, 1, and  son Zakari, 3, who both live with her.
These kids have never done drugs. They’re still being treated for addiction.
Opioids have devastated not just individuals in the rural Cecil County, but impacted children so heavily that officials are now treating addiction as a family affair.

About this project

The reporters examined Baltimore’s response to rising overdose deaths as part of The New York Times Local Investigations Fellowship.

Reporting by Alissa Zhu, Nick Thieme and Jessica Gallagher. Additional reporting by Cadence Quaranta, Emily Sullivan and Adam Willis, and Cheryl Phillips and Eric Sagara of Big Local News. Additional research by Susan C. Beachy and Kirsten Noyes.

Photography and photo layout by Jessica Gallagher and Ariel Zambelich. Design, video and web production for The Baltimore Banner by Ryan Little, Emma Patti Harris and Zuri Berry. Audience, social and reader engagement by T.J. Ortenzi, Stokely Baksh and Krishna Sharma. Video and web production for The New York Times by Leo Dominguez, Rebecca Suner and Claire Hogan. Graphics by Molly Cook Escobar, Scott Reinhard and Nick Thieme.

Editing by The New York Times, Kimi Yoshino, Richard Martin, Ryan Little and Emma Patti Harris.